Testimony

Broderic Adams: Turning Tragedy into Triumph

By Robert HullThe 700 Club

November 16, 2010

CBN.com
 As a boy, Broderic Adams went to church with his mother every Sunday. But it was the time he spent with his father the rest of the week that really shaped his life.

“There was always a fear," Broderic tells The 700 Club. "There was always a fear on the inside of me not knowing whether he would come home drunk or not, and if he did come home drunk, what was going to happen. There was definitely physical abuse but an extreme amount of verbal abuse.”

“I drank really hard," his father David confesses. "I partied really hard. I didn’t really necessarily want to be at home that much. It had a lot of affect on our family a tremendous amount.”

When he was 13, Broderic quit going to church and followed in his father’s footsteps. He started using drugs and alcohol.

“It kind of numbed me up for the time being. It kept me out of reality," Broderic says. "It was out of trying to escape from the alcohol, from the abuse, from the fear. It was from seeing what my father was putting my mother, my brother and myself through. There were a lot of consequences. I got in trouble with the police a lot. I stayed in trouble at home with my parents a lot. I stayed in trouble at school.”

His lifestyle and consequences caught up with him when he was 19. After a long day of partying and drinking with friends, he got behind the wheel of his car and played chicken with oncoming traffic.

Broderic recalls, “I would get into the oncoming lane and see how close I could get to that vehicle without hitting it and swerve back into my lane. When I swerved to get out the way of the vehicle, that’s when my vehicle started to flip. I was thrown out of the vehicle. My best friend told me that, after the vehicle stopped rolling, he had to kick his way out of the passenger side door. He finally found me about 20 to 30 feet out in the woods by the side of the road. He told me that when he found me I was covered in blood. He wouldn’t even touch me, because he knew I had been severely injured.”

Broderic spent the next 30 days in the intensive care unit of an Atlanta hospital. He was paralyzed from the chest down. When he finally returned home, the reality of his condition set in.

"For the first three months or so after I got home from the hospital, I wouldn’t even get out of bed. I would barely eat. I wouldn’t allow my parents to take care of me. I fell into a deep, deep depression.”

"When he realized he could not walk or move, he would sit in the hallway in his wheel chair and wail, just wail and cry for hours on end," David says. "There was nothing I could do. There was just nothing I could say or do.”

Broderic says, “As far as I was concerned, my life had been completely ripped away from me. I saw absolutely no hope. I saw absolutely no light at the end of that extremely dark tunnel. I was just on a downward spiral. Things got extremely bad. My goal was to drink as much alcohol and do as many drugs as I possibly could in hopes that I would definitely overdose. I definitely did not want to live. That was for sure.”

He eventually got out of the house and back into the party scene. This time the drugs and drinking got harder. Broderic was arrested for drugs and illegal gun possession and sentenced to two years in prison.

"I was in prison," he says. "I was 22 years old. I was paralyzed and in a wheel chair, and I was facing the most difficult time I had faced in my entire life. I finally realized that I had done things my way for nine long years, and all I had done was mess up my life. I decided that I’m going to just turn it all over to God. As the song goes, ‘Surrender all to Jesus Christ.’ I made the choice to face the rest of my life with Jesus Christ in my heart and the Holy Spirit leading me and guiding me. Over those next two years it was like going through God school. Really, I just spent my entire day with the Lord.”

He forgave his father for the years of abuse and prayed that he would turn his life over to Jesus and find freedom from alcohol. Before his sentence was over his prayers were answered.

Broderic says, “He cried out to God. He asked Him for mercy and God showed mercy and right then and there delivered him from alcohol. God definitely answered my prayers.”

"That day I did get down on my knees," David says. "From that day forward, things started turning around for me. I realized what’s important. I feel His presence. Once you get it, you don’t want to lose it. It’s the greatest thing that you’ve ever had or could get.”

Broderic is out of prison and married. The scars on his body are a reminder of the consequences of the lifestyle he used to live.

“I’m still living for God, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve had every opportunity since I was released from prison to turn back to that lifestyle that I once lived. I don’t want to have anything to do with that lifestyle. It did nothing but bring me down and destroy me. Becoming saved in Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ, has done everything in the world to lift me up.”

He adds, “If you choose to obey God, if you choose to believe on Jesus and ask Him to come into your life and forgive you for all the wrong you’ve done and help you, some amazing things will begin to take place in your life. God will definitely turn your tragedies into triumph and victory. He’ll definitely right your wrongs. He’s definitely done that for me.”